Last Saturday, I held another Piano Party for my students. I had record attendance: 14 students! Here’s a run-down of what we did:
We introduced ourselves, and shared our favorite Christmas present this year.
Christmas Recital and Name-That Tune game. Yes, I know Christmas is over! Because of how busy December often can be, I decided to try scheduling our students-only Christmas recital in early January instead. Besides, students always play their Christmas pieces through the break anyway, so they might as well do the recital after that!
I took advantage of the fact that my students would be playing familiar tunes, and held a name-that-tune game. I gave each student the worksheet below, and they had to write down the titles as they heard them. If they got it correct, they got to color in the star on the right, in order to keep track of how many they guessed correctly. This was a huge hit! Even the students who didn’t know very Christmas tunes were able to learn some new ones by the end.
You can download the Name-That-Tune worksheet by visiting the Printables > Games page and scrolling down to “Name-That-Tune – Christmas Edition.”
Snacktime: cookies & orange juice. (I don’t always provide a snack, but this time I did.)
Musical Truth or Dare. My students had requested to play this game again today, after liking it so much last time. The details for this game are available here at pianimation.com.
Grand Staff Pass game. I described this game in detail yesterday — click here to read the post.
Rhythm Time Match-Up Race. This active, relay game is by Susan Paradis and Cecily. Students are divided into two teams who are racing to match all of their measures of rhythm to the correct time signature. You read more about this game here.
Music Bingo game. This is Susan Paradis’ version of Music Bingo, which is excellent. I’ve used this game many times in the past, and students always enjoy it.
Oh, what fun! 🙂
I just played “name that tune xmas edition” today in 2 different group lessons and I chose 15 songs that had the word “Christmas” in it for them to guess from! It was so fun! Thanks for your ideas!!
How long is a piano party?
I hold them for an hour-and-a-half on Saturday mornings (10:30-noon).
How cool! I do piano parties too… started getting into them last year, I was feeling quite inspired when I listened to a nine year old talk about all the cool games that she was going to play at her birthday party. Glad to know that somebody on the other side of the world holds parties of the same kind of nature! In recent times, I’ve collaborated with some of my piano teacher friends. There was one occasion where I encouraged a few students to bring along their second instruments (we do a bit of Orff style ensemble work). I also get the kids to perform something that they have worked on recently (giving them deadlines seems to make them work harder!). I’ve also considered having themed parties – like you have done, except on a particular style or aspect of music (e.g. having a Jazz mocktail party, where kids take turns on the piano, being assigned 5-10 minute ‘shifts’ improvising at the keyboard in the Jazz style) whilst the rest of the children socialise, eat and hand out food to the adults – eight weeks prior to this party the kids would have learned how to improvise in the Jazz style). Haven’t done this yet, mainly because it is a lot to organise.
I love the games you play – I just wonder, do you normally have mixed ages, or do you make sure that all the kids are the same age? I’ve found that it can be extremely tricky to co-ordinate kids of varying levels and ages. Do you have the piano parties in your studio? I normally have them at students homes (it is on a rotating basis, parents who have houses that are suitable to this kind of thing nominate their premises).
I also wonder, what does introducing entail? Do you play ice-breaker games?